Segmentation in English entertainment is set to grow in 2018: Vivek Srivastava

Speaking on the development of the English movies genre in the last couple of years, Vivek Srivastava, Executive Vice President & Head Entertainment Cluster, Times Network, remarked that earlier, English movies were offered like an Indian thali, where everything was presented on the same platform. However, in the last 3-4 years, it has been established that audiences now know what they want to watch on television and thus, segmentation has become more important. “The success of our movie portfolio is smart segmentation,” Srivastava said, adding, “Romedy Now was the first segmented brand catering to family audiences. MN+ is an HD only brand driven by best of cinema rather than action, while our latest launch, MNX, which is for the millennial audiences. All our channels are catering to distinct content buckets and consumer choices.” 

While commenting on the performance of MNX, Srivastava said that the channel had done “fantastically well” for the Times Network. “It has been consistently beating HBO with a very healthy margin. We are very happy that now we have two brands – Movies Now and MNX – among the top four,” he further said. 

The 7-9-11 time slot forms the key blocks for the English movies channels and Times Network has been consistently focussing on these slot to maintain its leadership. “In the smaller markets, viewers come in at 7 pm, while in the metros it is 11 pm. Hence, our scheduling is in line with the audience behavior,” Srivastava said. 

On the content front, when pointed out that all the English movie channels end up showing the same movies, Srivastava quipped, “We are not apologetic about repeating movies. While we boast of the largest library and an efficient repeat ratio, we are in the business of repeating movies.” According to him, the key is to schedule the titles across time bands so that fatigue doesn’t kick in. “We rest our titles well and promote effectively, ensuring that burn is minimal,” he added. He further said, “We don’t classify content by the era but by genre. If the genre is ‘comedy’, then any comedy title, irrespective of the year of release, will fit in.” 

While market forces decide the acquisition costs, Srivastava believes that there is scope for reduction in English content acquisition costs. He expects some rationalisation to happen in 2018.  

Zoom’s growth 

Meanwhile, the channel Zoom has gone up in terms of performance in the last 1-2 years. “A year back we stood at #11, but now it stands amongst the top 5,” Srivastava claimed. 

While elucidating on the factors contributing to Zoom’s growth, he said, “Firstly, we ensured that we are speaking in one lingo. Therefore, right from the music mix to the names of the shows to the tempo, genre and era – the channel has a uniform tone.” 

On the non-music side, keeping in mind the audiences’ needs, Zoom focuses more on young people. “We have done strategic partnerships to offer shows like ‘What the duck’, ‘Spotlight’ and ‘Gehraiyaan’, which added a different flavour to the channel. We launched ‘Ankanhee’, which has performed excellently on the platform. Chat show ‘Yaar Mera Superstar’ has been consistently performing well for over two years,” Srivastava added. 

He further said, “The most significant change, however, is that we have stopped looking at Zoom as merely a television channel. We view it as a brand which is present across platforms – TV, digital and live. We have the largest digital and social presence. There is a big community which exists on digital platform for Zoom, which interacts with us daily. We have created several digital-only shows and properties to constantly engage with this segment – ‘Zoom Studio’, ‘Mr India’ and so on. We telecast most of the shows simultaneously on digital. Going forward, we will launch limited series for both TV and digital.” 

Speaking on the expectations from 2018, Srivastava affirmed that segmentation is all set to grow, which will drive growth across the genre.